Our Liberty Mutual Bike-A-Thon Was a Gala Event in Nashville, TN

Our Liberty Mutual Bike-A-Thon Was a Gala Event in Nashville, TN

What an incredible workshop this turned out to be! Our facilitator Rob Jackson thought he would have his hands full with 130 participants all going in different directions, but the size of the group actually turned out to be an asset in terms of energy, creativity, and competition. In fact, things really couldn’t have gone any more smoothly. The Liberty Mutual Insurance team came into the workshop already preloaded with an advanced set of communication and leadership skills, so our real goal was finding the right ways to challenge them.

A Large Group Dreams Big

We staged this charity workshop at the Double Tree Hilton In Nashville, where Liberty Mutual Insurance was holding a much bigger company event. So we were faced with a ton of possible distractions — the charms of Music City, 130 participants eager to learn, and a huge national company doing their thing in the background. Fortunately, there was a lot of good internal leadership happening as well and we were able to get things going pretty quickly.

We had talked at length with Liberty Mutual’s management team prior to the workshop, so we knew they wanted to accomplish two basic goals, in addition to donating a record number of bikes to the Martha O’Bryan Center! Essentially, they wanted us to help their staff potentiate one another’s talents and improve their big picture thinking. We accomplished this by throwing some challenging little twists into the morning activities and maintaining a quick pace the entire day.

After dividing this huge group into manageable teams, we started the workshop off with Air Counting and our Dice Game before transitioning into Group Writing and a surprisingly challenging game called Flip the Cup. The teams clearly enjoyed themselves, but under the surface, they were also widening their individual perspectives.

Teamwork, Fun, and Bicycles for the Martha O’Bryan Center

The word of the day was effectiveness. With a lot of help from smart, efficient people, we transitioned easily from the morning activities into the Bike-A-Thon proper without a hitch. This was when the lessons the teams had learned that morning really started to bear fruit. These lessons, combined with the leadership Liberty Mutual had coming in, made for a productive and enjoyable workshop.

We’re not sure if they ended up donating a record number of bikes, but the representative from the Marth O’Bryan Center certainly seemed pleased with the haul!